Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise, outlines the underlying unit economics that determine whether above-the-line brand advertising works for a given company.
“If it, if you have a mass market product that's relevant to everyone, then generally mass market channels will work. And the second part is, who else is competing for that eyeball at that point in time? Can they monetize that user better than we can, and therefore they can spend more on acquiring the customer?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Nilan Peiris
Insight
Peiris: The lowest-cost, highest-quality product will win cross-border payments
“The kind of strategic thesis at the heart of wise is whoever has the lowest cost, highest quality product, will take the whole cross-border market.”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 12:07Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Peiris: Neobanks cannot sustainably subsidize payments with deposit interest
“If a neobank starts, like using that money to subsidize another product, it becomes unfeasible because then people would churn.”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 14:32Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionPartly supported
Western Union's high margins allow them to outspend Wise on search marketing
“Western Union is like seven to eight times more expensive than WISE. So they could spend seven to eight times more than us on marketing. And therefore there's no way we would ever be able to compete on those SEM key head terms.”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 16:38Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionPartly supported
Peiris: Wise halved marketing spend and lost only 1% of revenue
“We became profitable in about six to nine months, and there was only one cost we changed to get there, Which was our marketing spend. And I think I've shared this publicly before, and this is about four years ago. We halved our marketing spend. We dropped 10% …”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 42:30Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Wise periodically halves marketing spend to flush out accumulated budget inefficiency
“This kind of inefficiency will build up all the time in marketing. So about two or three years later, we kind of ran the same drill without a need to do it. Say, we're going to halve the marketing spend. Tell me how much we're going to drop revenue, and we bar…”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 43:07Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Wise CPO predicts AI will eventually eliminate human oversight in workflows
“You can kind of see how it gets to the point that, that, that human, that person will also not be needed in a while as well.”
Nilan PeirisJul 26, 2024▶ 51:10Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.